Johnson quite capable of pulling off Cup three-peat

It isn't easy to win three consecutive championships in anything.

Sure, Takeri "Tsunami" Kobayashi won the Nathan's International Hot Dog Eating Contest a remarkable six times in a row from 2001 through 2006. But if you ask him, he probably would say the third championship -- when his closest competitor pulled to within 14 hot dogs of him at the finish -- was one of the toughest.

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That was in 2003, and by then the Hot Dog contest had come a long way since 1981 when American winner Thomas DeBerry retired after five minutes, and a mere 11 hot dogs consumed, to attend a family barbecue.

Well, driver Jimmie Johnson is no hot dog -- but he did barbecue the rest of the field in Sunday night's Pepsi 500 at Auto Club Speedway. Johnson's win was so decisive that it revived spirited discussion of his chances of successfully defending back-to-back titles when the Chase for the Sprint Cup commences in less than two weeks.

Johnson led 228 of 250 laps and when he did fall back because of varying pit strategies or whatever, it usually took him all of about five seconds to get back to the front.

After laying low for much of this season, Johnson is gaining momentum at just the right time. He now has three victories, trailing only points-leader Kyle Busch, who has eight, and Carl Edwards, who has six, heading into this Saturday night's finale of the 26-race "regular season" at Richmond.

Edwards keeps saying he doesn't believe in momentum, but it's obvious, at least on some level, that Johnson does. As he heads into a race where he is the defending champion, he appears to be building it at precisely the right time.

History lessons

How hard is it to win three championships in a row?

Well, it's only been done once at what is now the Sprint Cup level in NASCAR. The legendary Cale Yarborough accomplished it, winning titles in 1976, 1977 and 1978 while driving for the even more legendary Junior Johnson.

Yarborough was so fired up after wrapping up the championship with two races left in the 1978 season (and by finishing two laps in front of everyone else at Rockingham) that he announced a bold goal.

"I'd like to win more championships than any other driver," Yarborough told reporters.

At the time, Richard Petty had six championships. Petty would go on to win one more. Yarborough, then 38 years old, raced full-time for only two more seasons and won a bunch more races but never another title before eventually retiring for good nine years later.

As great as Petty was, he never won three championships in a row.

Check in on other sports -- yes, we will include team sports because Sprint Cup racing is, in reality, a total team sport even though the driver frequently reaps 95 percent of the glory -- and it becomes glaringly obvious that three-peats are exceedingly rare.

The Los Angeles Lakers did it in 2000, 2001 and 2002, and the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls also did it in the National Basketball Association in recent memory -- in fact accomplishing it twice (1996-98 and again in 1991-93).

In Major League Baseball, the New York Yankees did it in 1998-2000, but before that the most recent team to win three consecutive World Series titles was the Oakland Athletics in 1972-74.

And in the National Football League, no one has ever won three Super Bowls in a row. The Green Bay Packers were the last team to win three NFL championships in a row, but the first year they did it, in 1965, they didn't even have to contend with the pesky outsiders from the old American Football League that eventually would oppose them in football's biggest game.

Which brings us back to ...

So can Johnson come from behind to pull it off? A race such as the one he dominated Sunday night sure makes it all seem possible.

Remember, the field will be re-set for the Chase, with the 12 Chase qualifiers beginning with 5,000 points each and then having 10 bonus points added for each race victory they claim in the regular season. At the moment, Busch has 80 bonus points piled up, Edwards 50 (he lost 10 because of a rules infraction penalty assessed after his victory at Las Vegas), and Johnson 30. No one else has more than 10.

The scary thing -- for those opposing Johnson, that is -- is that this is exactly the spot in the schedule when the No. 48 Chevrolet fielded by Hendrick Motorsports caught fire last year. And we're not talking about catching fire like after hitting the wall; we're talking smokin' hot in a good way, like at one of those family barbecues.

Johnson won last year's Labor Day weekend race at Fontana, too. Then he won at Richmond -- and beginning this past Oct. 21 at Martinsville, he won four times in a row to essentially have the issue decided by the time the final race in the Chase was held in Homestead, Fla., just before Thanksgiving.

If it weren't for the Chase, Johnson would have virtually no chance. Busch is currently a comfortable 208 points ahead of Edwards and 369 in front of Johnson. But after Richmond, that advantage will be reduced to no more than 30 over Edwards and possibly as few as 40 over Johnson.

Is it harder to win three consecutive championships now than it was when Yarborough pulled it off? Or is it easier?

Well, that depends on one's point of view. The competition is definitely tougher from top to bottom, and the Chase, after the first 26 races, obviously is the great equalizer that makes it seem more difficult for Busch to win a title some think he already deserves and easier for Johnson to continue hot pursuit of yet another trophy.

The truth is, the answers don't really matter. These are the rules of the game now, and Johnson is geared up to play by them and in position to take advantage of them.

The game is about to be on.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.